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Ayan Sarkar
October 4, 2016

Table of content

Introduction

The modern day consumers have shut off the conventional world of marketing. People today own a DVR which can skip television advertising, ignore magazine advertising and become expert at online surfing which brings them information, within a second or two with just one click. The popularity of the internet has led the global citizens to use it in all possible form and this has also shown its impact on the marketing world.

The overall impact and effect of traditional marketing are losing its base and grab from over the market as a result of which, the marketers are indulged in mind-boggling sessions to come up with ideas and approaches which can help them market the business in an effective way.

An entirely new range of marketing techniques has been introduced so as to grab the attention of the potential customers for businesses belonging to various verticals.

It is thus, that content marketing has proved its worth and has paved its way to becoming a reliable and efficient strategy to market a business relevantly in the modern world.

You might be wondering, what content marketing is, let’s get a definition for the same:

“Content Marketing is a well-defined and strategic marketing approach which focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content for attracting and retaining pertinent audiences, with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

The purpose of content marketing, as per the above-mentioned definition is to attract and retain customers by creating valuable and engaging content which can motivate the consumer behavior positively.

Content marketing is an art of communicating with prospects and customers without selling anything. Instead of pitching the products or services, through content marketing one simply, delivers information, making the buyer more intelligent. The essence of content strategy is the belief of delivering consistent, valuable information to buyers; they ultimately reward us with loyalty and business.

Content Is Certainly The Present As Well As Future Of Marketing

If you read the definition of content marketing one more time, you will certainly lay great focus upon the valuable and relevant information. Content marketing is important because thousands of marketing messages are received per day per person. Good content can certainly motivate a person to read, think as well as behave, differently.

Leaders and experts in marketing from across the world including thinkers, in marketing, believe that content marketing is the present and future of marketing.

Without Great Content, Marketing Is Impossible.

Irrespective of whatever marketing tactics one use, content marketing is an important part of the process and not something separate. Quality content is an important part of different forms of marketing:

  • Social Media Marketing: Content marketing strategy is important right before social media strategy.
  • SEO: Search engines give businesses the authority to publish quality, consistent content.
  • PR: Professional PR strategies can address issues which readers care about certainly not their business.
  • PPC: Be it PPC, one need great content for it.
  • Inbound marketing: Content is the key to driving leads and traffic.
  • Content Strategy: Content Strategy is the part of effective marketing strategies through content.

History

Since long, advertising has been used to distribute information about a brand and for building a brand’s reputation.

In the year 1895, John Deere published a magazine “The Furrow” which provided information to farmers on how to become more profitable. The magazine is known to reach 1.5 million readers in 40 countries in 12 different languages, in the first publication.

Jell-O Salesmen is reported to have gone door-to-door distributing his cookbook for free in the year 1904. With dessert known as versatile food, the sales of the company rose to over $1 million by the year 1906.

The phrase ‘content marketing’ is reported to have been used as early as 1996 by John F. Oppedahi at a roundtable conference at American Society For Newspaper Editors. In content marketing, content is usually created providing the consumers, the information which they usually seek.

By the year 2014, Forbes magazine website have usually stated that there are seven most ways where content marketing can be used. In fact, as per the records by the year 2013, the percentage of content marketing is used by enterprises is more than 60% a year.

Why Content Marketing?

After acquiring an in-depth understanding of what content marketing is, the need for realizing the importance of content marketing is extremely important. There is also a great need to give your business a smooth rise in the tough and highly competitive era.

The buying cycle of a consumer involves four steps which are mentioned below:

1. Awareness: Prior to awareness, the customer may have a need but they are not aware of a proper solution.

2. Research: As soon as awareness spread, research is the next step conducted by a buyer. It enables them to educate themselves about the product or service in an effective way.

3. Consideration: Through the help of the research conducted by them, the buyers gain information about the products from various vendors to make sure that they are getting high quality product at fair price.

4. Buy: This is the last- step of the buying cycle which ensures a consumer to move forward with their decision of buying.

If your customers are at the last two steps of the cycle, then the traditional media and marketing strategy might really seem to be ideal and beneficial for you. But, if in case, you are stuck in the first two steps then content marketing is the right key to get out of the situation and inform and educate your prospective customers with the right kind of knowledge about the product or service, which they are interested in.

In most companies with the help of content marketing, the conversion rate increases more than 100% over the recent year. It happens when potential clients find the content and read it and are usually convinced that all the information mentioned in it is trustworthy and relevant.

Trust is built with the use of the content and information.

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The return on investment for content marketing can be great if it is executed in the right way possible. With 95% of success experienced in content marketing, the whole effort can be traced to the exclusiveness and engaging nature of the content.

Content marketing usually provides additional benefits in various digital channels. It provides an edge for social media marketing and SEO.

Strategizing Business With Content Marketing Strategy

Well from above, you may feel that the scenario may be working perfectly for you along with marketing programs providing instant results like list purchasing, PPC and also trade show marketing in just minutes.

Content marketing is used especially when businesses realize that the other marketing programs are usually ineffective, not scalable, too expensive or sometimes all of the above.

The business does not tend to cease all other marketing activities; rather they use the content marketing along with other techniques. Various marketing strategies can be implemented to effectively implement with content marketing. There are different content marketing programs which incorporate different marketing techniques with content initiatives.

The Secret Of Content Marketing

# Adding Value

Add value to your content. Yes, that’s the secret. If the content has no value attached to it, it is simply a non-engaging content for a large chunk of your audiences. Most of the companies, that claim to be using content marketing, generally are not able to receive the right kind of ROI mainly because they avoid doing the obvious and let their content be without value.

# Great Content

When you read any content what attracts you to it and enable you to keep going is that the content is effective. The prime factor of great content marketing is to distribute informative and persuasive content. Sometimes great content is used to target great audience. Some of the great contents are paid to be read, watched or listen.

Five Essential Types Of Content Marketing Which Delivers Instant Result

The types of content in the modern and digital age are varied, and the type of content marketing is also too wide. However, there are some essential types of content marketing techniques with the help of which you can actually get to experience reliable and instant result for your marketing efforts. Some of these types are:

Infographics

These are usually long, vertical graphics which include charts, graphs, statistics and other information. Infographics can be very effective if the one which is used can be passed around various social media and also be posted on a website for several years. There are various contractors who can be hired to get a professionally designed infographic. If you are hiring an agency then the services which you gain might include research, design, strategy and planning, along with copywriting. The infographic can be promoted to bloggers and various social media platforms.

Webpages

Webpage surely needs to enhance its content and make it more appealing and engaging for the visitors. This ensures increased views of the web page, invites a large number of customers and inform them about the products and services which the company sells. When the content is used in the right possible way in the web page, it promises to help the owners reap beneficial results.

Podcasts

With the help of podcasts, one can gain significant visibility of the specific group of target audience. Valuable information or advice is posted or updated on the podcast for free by the content marketers through the help of which they actually get to meet the market’s demands for explicit visibility. Strategizing your podcast can lead to more sales of books, signups for courses informing targeting customers in the best possible way.

Videos

Online video can easily be optimized with YouTube channel. Start creating videos which can be optimized for effectively targeting the right audience. Videos and podcasts are targeted form of content marketing because people think they are expensive and difficult. But the truth is, it is certainly easier than one think.

Books

Books are certainly another method of content marketing. Marketers not only just sell books but they sell books as an effective marketing tool. A book is a tool for driving customers to the specifically mentioned business.

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Steps To Guide You In The Right Way With Content Marketing

Image Source- http://bit.ly/2mZRv8N

All said and done, the most important aspect which one should think about is “How To Do Content Marketing?” Here are the steps which can help and guide you in the right way.

Step 1: Finding Out Who Should Lead The Content Marketing

In true sense, one certainly requires manpower for effective content marketing who will together manage the program. There is no fixed structure for the tree of content marketing and it largely depends on the size of the company, the marketing team as well as budget.

The main motto for content marketing is definitely to attract prospective client with the top-of-the-funnel activity attracting people right to the business. It usually converts and closes right in the middle of the funnel while the bottom of the funnel marketing activities includes email marketing, sales enablement, marketing ops, and conversion rate optimization.

Companies of various sizes manage their content marketing team of various strengths depending on their budget. Let’s discuss the content marketing set-up in different companies with the team member as well as budget.

Startups With Just One Member And Little Or No Budget

Take the example that you are a solo person and is operating your business alone with no or little budget. Then it will be your responsibility to run the content marketing all on your own.

In case of responsibilities of content marketing, one’s job will be

  • Creating content which is written, visual may be short form more like blog post or long form.
  • Managing social media.
  • Optimizing that content for SEO

Small Medium Business With Marketing Team Of Three Members And Some Content Marketing Budget

If the marketing team expands, the work of content marketing becomes more interesting. The process of content marketing can be approached in couple of ways. One person can be completely responsible for the content marketing activities while the other person can align more bottom and middle of the funnel.

Another process will be that two of the experts can completely own the content marketing activities while the other person manages the rest.

The best possible way in which one can help a sales team is by creating content and engaging audience and thus increasing leads over time. With the increase in number of the team, the work does not change. With the team of one or three, the work remains the same- content creation, SEO and social media.

If two employees are not so experienced then both should contribute in the best way possible.

Mid Size With A Team Of Nine With Dedicated Budget Of Content Marketing

With a large marketing team, the work becomes more and more interesting. Marketing team of nine people, the recommendation is to invest in various content marketing activities that grow right to the top of the funnel.

Now if you have five employees dedicated to content marketing, you can distribute the responsibility by breaking it down to:

  • Blogging– Two employees
  • Long-form and premium content– One employee
  • SEO– One employee
  • Design– One employee

In each and every organization, there is a CMO or head of marketing reported by all employees. Thus, in short, CMO will be the head of the content marketing program creating the day-to-day activities which can be carried out by the team.

Large Enterprise With Marketing Team Of Eighteen With Content Marketing Budget

With marketing team of 18, the content marketing team will be provided with same roles- bloggers with content creators, designers, SEO specialists, just multiply the number. The best is three bloggers on staff with two other employees for each role. Now if these bloggers are expertise in editing then quality content increases with output.

At this stage of growth, dedicated leadership can provide content marketing team right effort. There are many organizations which hire a director of content, VP of content, Chief Content officer or editor-in-chief leading the entire content marketing team. Secure budget with a vision for team hiring right talent with content ideas, solving growth and coordinating with other leaders right across marketing organization can lead to fruitful results.

When the marketing team is more than 18 or more than 100, the team structure changes significantly.

The hired content creators are capable of doing design on their own laying out e-books, creating social images with front-end design work. The budget of content marketing includes space for a retainer of an agency or contracted design work from third parties.

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Step 2: Hiring Team For Content Marketing

Well now you aware of the excellent team structure, you can choose and identify which one is perfect for you. The next big step will be how to get started. How people are hired for the right roles. Here are some sample job descriptions with skills and qualities which candidates need to possess to make their way to your team.

The various specific needs, for instance, may vary with the titles differing right from content creators, content strategists and social media managers.

Blogger

Candidates who apply for blogger must surely have the love for writing as well as comprehensive knowledge about the industry of content marketing. The blogger will tell and develop the company’s voice right through all the blog content.

Responsibilities:

  • Creating various types of article for the blog.
  • Giving feedback to other contributors as well as editing content of another writer.
  • Optimizing content for lead generation and search engine.
  • To improve blog strategies/tactics with analytical projects.
  • Expanding the reach of a blog with growing blog subscribers.

Requirements:

  • A detailed understanding of passion of the industry with business’s mission.
  • Writing and editing skills with the ability to adopt the tone, style and business types of content.
  • Organizational skills of independently and manage projects.
  • With 2-3 years of content creation and marketing experience.

Long Form Content Creator

A talented content writer can produce a blog and various projects regularly expanding the company digital’s footprint, subscribers, and leads. In this project, high level of creativity, project management skills with attention to detail become extremely essential.

Responsibilities:

  • Creating 1-2 resource each and every month to bring in lead, subscriptions, awareness.
  • Creating blogs as per your projects to attract visitors for social and search subscribers.
  • Growing the number of subscribers by increasing regular helpful content as per the needs.
  • Staying in touch with designers, product marketers and industry experts delivering relevant content meeting key stakeholders and audience.
  • Convincing other of the creative ideas worth investing effort and time.

Requirements:

  • BA/BSc degree with equivalent experience in working.
  • Previous experience in creating content relevant for the web most importantly for channel specific knowledge.
  • Creating audiences in past experience either offline or online.
  • Excellent dual approach with creative content and as well as result driven processes.

Social Media Manager

A professional social media manager can grow and engage followers and are equipped with the knowledge of growing as well as retaining them. This helps to convert leads, followers and increase the activity of the community.

Responsibilities:

  • Managing and building the social media profiles of presence with Facebook, Twitter, LinkenIn, Google+.
  • Creating shareable networks for specific networks.
  • Engaging and listening relevant discussion about competitors, company, and industry.
  • Marketers and content producers distribute content educating and entertaining audience.
  • Relevant traffic driving consistent and leads from social network presence.

Requirements:

  • Best possible experience on social media with each network and best practices.
  • BA/BSc degree or equivalent with work experience.
  • Better communicator and creative thinker both for data to inform decisions.

SEO Specialist

SEO should effectively be optimized for identifying as well as executing opportunities to improve the company’s as well as content’s search ranking. The specialist should be aware of his or her responsibilities and must understand the importance of using the market’s demands essentially.

Responsibilities:

  • Handling on-site and off- site SEO for any company.
  • Coordinating with bloggers for creating high-quality content around relevant terms.
  • Managing organic performance of search engine setting goals right through traffic and conversions.
  • Staying up-to date with latest trends and changes of SEO.

Requirements:

  • Equivalent working experience BA/BSc.
  • Key algorithm update with current search ranking with optimization factors and key algorithm updates.
  • Expert in keyword tools and web analytics.
  • Oral communication skills with written skills.
  • Bringing new ideas for content creation with expertise and eye for great design.
  • Managing design needs like presentations and trade show collateral.

Designer

Responsible for creating as well as maintaining the marketing assets with content created for supporting product with marketing goals. Right from the concept of execution, the candidate can improve the user experience by bringing a brand to life with various touch-points.

Responsibilities:

  • Helping to bring new ideas for content creation and design with expertise and eye for design.
  • Collaborating short-form and long writers helping content to come to life.
  • Creating templates for team to be efficient in posting on social media, email. Blog and other channels.
  • Managing design needs like presentation, trade show collateral.

Requirements:

  • BSc/BA working equivalent experience.
  • Past experience as an in-house designer at a marketing agency.
  • Designing assets which are a tablet, mobile, and desktop-friendly.
  • Expertise skills in similar technologies and Adobe Creative Suite with similar technologies.
  • Knowledge of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.

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Step 3: Getting Proper Tools For Content Marketing And Technology

Another important aspect of content marketing is that once you have the right person on the team then you have got just everything one need apart from some basic tools and technology which is certainly required to publish the content.

The technologies are things like market research tools, competitive intelligence tools or software considering the real-time trends. Experimenting with these on rolling basis will offer a free trial so that one can validate.

CMS

CMS is called Content Optimization System which allows creating as well as publishing content in a format which is web-friendly. You need some CMS with content marketing team setting up a blog and also adding blog posts with websites pages without getting help from IT developers.

Analytics

Certain analytics is required for the website and blog to measure the performance with the marketing goals. Some teams of content marketing rely on Google Analytics with robust, closed solutions making it easy to tie activities of content marketing right away.

You can secure your budget and grow the team. If you are looking for an easy way to share numbers right across various organizations, just check the various tools available. It will integrate with the software allowing you visualize and share the analytics with customized charts and dashboards.

Project Management Software

The frequency of blogging as well as social media and never to mention the various content assets right across various campaigns and teams with lightweight project management tool is critical. Organize your content, set deadlines with attach files as well as collaborating with teammates. There are tools in the world of a content marketing built-in marketplace of writers who are professional.

Design Software

Visual content plays a big role in the proper success of any content marketing strategy. There is a need for e-books, design infographics and creating social images. The tools will help the team for creating quality visual content things like cover photos, ads, and presentations.

There are certain core techniques which one should look for to get started. There is other tools and software which are worth your investment and which promises results which are worth reaping.

Step 4: Creating Content

These are all initial steps for content marketing. We have a team and we have the technology then the next step will actually start using content marketing. While creating impressive content cannot be convinced. Usually, the types of content can be used for demonstrating opportunities to the marketing team and with those who are involved in creating assets.

Blog Posts

As we all know blog posts are written by bloggers. With a large team, you can dedicate someone for creating gated assets as well as premium content like e-books. Blogs posts should help to promote the assets with SEO specialists working closely with bloggers and blog posts with the best opportunity for the company to improve the SEO of the site driving organic traffic and leads.

Image Source- http://bit.ly/2lQLARA

Various Types Of Blog Posts To Write:

  • How-to– These posts usually teach readers about how to do something. These perform typically well in organic search aligning them with long tail search terms.
  • List Posts– Curated examples should be informative which is search-friendly and simply entertaining.
  • Thought Leadership– Posts which explain various fundamental shifts in the industry or ask reader rethink convention wisdom.
  • Newsjacks– Usually timely content reports us on industry news to find popular news items accordingly.
  • SlideShares/Infographics– Blog posts can primarily be used with visual content for telling a story.

Premium or Gated Assets

Longer forms are usually addressed as Premium and gated assets and are usually time-intensive pieces which do not exist on blog. They can be used for generating leads, contacts or for brand building purposes. They are created by dedicated creator of long form if the team is large enough to have one and there are bloggers who get involved to as the blog posts are good testing grounds worth performing and investing.

Various Types Of Premium Assets To Create:

  • E-books– This one is incredibility important format which is presented as a PDF and redeemed right behind a form.
  • Research Reports– This one is often gated as a PDF.
  • Webinars– Webinars may feature guest speaker to bring his or her own audience widening the funnel. There are recorded versions of webinars which can gift you the right landing page.
  • Tools And Templates– Tools and templates often provide incredible lead generation techniques with targeting the audience with little investment required.

Visual Content

Regardless of team size, visual content are created by everyone except SEO specialist. Designers do maximum of the work like advanced creative work, content creators, social media managers and bloggers. The designers can also create templates for writers on the team so that they become more independent like creating e-book templates or anyone with In-Design license.

Various Types Of Visual Content To Create:

  • Infographics- These can be put in blog posts and shared on various social media.
  • SlideShares– Creating content for Slideshare can prove to be extremely helpful.
  • Video– Short videos can be used for YouTube or blog post for short videos for education and entertainment managing the content portfolio improving the SEO.

With the growth in the content marketing team, content can be effectively specialized. The largest team size can overlap each role in the creation of content and also in the distribution of content.

Step 5: Distributing Content

Creating content is helpful but distributing them in the right and appropriate way is certainly very necessary. Distributing content in the right way possible can help you reach a wider audience. Now when the question is how you will distribute your content, here are the ways in which you can do in the right way possible.

Search Engines

Google does the maximum distribution work just for you. Google effectively distribute the content which is created. Just make sure that content will appear high up on the page as possible. Writers should closely know the SEO strategies knowing the right keywords to go after- be it long tail terms and head terms at a certain level of competitiveness given the domain author and how to go after the terms. Content should be optimized for on-page SEO for improving ranking.

Social Media

Undoubtedly, social media is a very important aspect. Try to share the content on various social media on which you are active. Moreover, Google considers social media as an important ranking factor as per the various algorithms which are present. Content which is socially shared is a vote of approval on which depends the value of a post whether it should rank well on organic search or not.

Email

The most precious assets of marketers are email lists and are a smart way to drive traffic, conversions, and re-conversions of the content. Try investing blog email subscription list for valuable distribution alongside sales lists.

Social Ads & PPC

Digital advertising is certainly effective as well. The targeted investment can help to reach certain pieces of the content getting amplification for finding an efficient CPC. This seems like an initial problem which can drive you to content marketing in the first place.

A blog post can have wide appeal beyond the target audience. The test promotion of the blog post can be via paid Facebook ad and find that CPC is lower than the typically paid expenditures driving 40% more of the site traffic than the normal expenditure. Converting leads is important with promoting every piece of content with paid budget and also finding right opportunities to improve organically also.

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Top Lead Generation Ideas In The Arena Of Content Marketing

Image Source- http://bit.ly/2n8UivP

Try to think of the ways which can effectively generate leads for business. With the Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, the search engine giant can bring fresh, relevant and original content on websites.

1. Producing An E-Book

The revenue from industry right from e-book sales are expected to hit nearly $8.7 billion in the year 2018 with a maximum increase of more than 3000% since the year 2008. The United States is certainly expected to reach 112 million e-book readers by the time 2020.

With the right e-book, you can get the following benefits which are as follows.

1. Educating Potential Leads
2. Showing What You Know
3. Capturing Leads Right In The Sales Funnel

Educating Potential Leads

A well-written e-book should be of great value to readers who will get specific answers to questions urging right between the material.

The e-book is the first contact point right between reader and you and it is absolutely critical to delivering, while providing the information, as promised on the landing page or email, or else you would be killing the reputation or any relationship with the audience.

Showing What You Know

If you want to show people what you know about any certain subject or industry then the best way to do it is write it down in an e-book. Extremely different from blog posts and also long ones, an e-book will let you discuss a topic in an in-depth manner. The deeper one goes in the topic, the more information readers get from you, in turn, increasing your e-book’s value.

Your e-book is your source of rich prospects, who are expecting to get more valuable information from you in future.

Capturing Leads Right In Sales Funnel

The most important aspect of creating an e-book is to allow collecting email addresses of readers putting them in the sales funnel. The success of this phase depends on the landing page letting the readers know the information right in the e-book and that’s why it worth your time.

While creating a landing page for an e-book, the summary of the basic elements should be focused on creating a landing page.

Here are seven elements of E-book

  • Headline
  • Subheading
  • Description
  • Features
  • E-book picture
  • Lead form
  • Call to action

2. Hosting A Webinar

The webinar can produce an effective rush of an audience just for you. The webinar is very like an e-book if it does bear and has a value to people in the right sense.

A webinar is considered something to offer value providing their contact details and information. One can provide real-life on training with real life applications and expertise.

When a webinar is considered to give value, people will happily give the contact details and information. You will have to give hands-on training with your expertise at different places.

If you are hosting a webinar, here are some elements which should be seen carefully.

For a webinar, few minutes can be set aside for Q&A session giving the attendees opportunity to participate in the information one is looking for.

Speaker

The speaker is known to be the important component of a webinar. Anything less than an important speaker will cause the attendees to multitask or take a break from the session.

It is important who is an expert on the topic and has the ability for commanding the attention of people right through a computer screen.

Recording

The recording the webinar can help you evaluate what presentation is and what is not. Most importantly, recording the webinar allows providing a copyright to the attendees providing the content offer right to the registrants unable to join the webinar.

Survey

Try and consider getting feedback right from the attendees. Ask what it is like about the presentation, topic as well as a speaker and whether there are any suggestions for future webinars. Use this feedback right as the future content marketing efforts.

3. Hosting Real Life Events

Industry events play a key role in any content marketing strategy. It is good to think of them as a way to bridge the gap between the online world and the offline one. They let you interact and learn about potential leads in a way that’s just not possible, through email blasts and social media comments.

The content is what drives the success of any event that is the reason why both are related playing an important role in the marketing funnel. Here is how you can use content to prepare to improve the live event.

Before

  • Talk the event’s speakers as well as notable guests through chat/sms or video and uploading content right on the website as well as social media pages for generating interest.
  • You should encourage guests and speakers for sharing the interview for additional visibility.
  • Creating an event hash tag for effectively promoting the event. This will spur the event to go viral measuring the mentions and spread of the content.

During

  • Live blog or tweet encouraging attendees for doing the same.
  • You can offer prizes to several lucky participants uploading pictures on Facebook or Instagram making all the posts, reposts as well.

After

  • Uploading videos and photos of the event right on facebook, Instagram, Flickr or some other photo and video-sharing site.
  • Consolidating all the content as related to the event, articles, photos and videos and other posting mentioned on the event. This can be shared on curated content right on Storify and Tumblr.
  • Review the event along with the sake of the audience as well. Compare the results of the event right with the goals. Did the event have any sort of shortcomings? Upload the thoughts right to the blog or podcast.

Great events are very effective lead-generation tool doubling the opportunity to build an image and brand.

4. Creating Guides And White Papers

White papers are about as old school and they are still around for a good reason as they work. White papers have to be effective right at generating leads. Here is straight-forward four points.

  • Title: Catching the reader’s attention and conveying the paper’s subject matter.
  • Content: Expound right on the title knowing a particular customer’s purchase journey. Content have to be helpful even if the reader would not buy the service or product.
  • Promotional Plan: Distribute copies of excellent white paper right to the sales tea, and run right through the content. Include the white paper in social media outreach campaigns, external advertising or efforts.
  • Lead strategy: Instead of following up with buy now and call to action responding to the lead in the best way possible offering more information. Perhaps try sending an email asking the reader wants to download the white paper, sign up the next webinar and also for joining a future event.

5. Write Case Studies For Consumer

Case studies can tell stories and also good stories. It can surely be a success story of product or service or solution to be fixed. There are many marketers who have an aversion towards case studies because they are boring and uninspiring.

There are many marketers which bear an aversion as they are boring and uninspiring. But they are invaluable in turning the attention of the readers and research buying the customers. As per research, case studies are the third most important B2B marketing tactics.

Here is a guide on how to write a case study which can be broken right as following:

  • Abstract Or Summary: Start the case study with summary and a preview of the solution and steps which are taken to solve it.
  • Real People: Genuine interviews are exclusively what makes great case studies and stand out. A case study will tell a story with the narrative being most effective when it is said from the perspective of customers.
  • Photos and Videos: Various multimedia assets can make the case studies much more engaging appealing to visual and oral learners. Charts are useful in giving background to case study’s points perfectly making comparisons between experiences or products more effective.
  • Solution: When talking about solution, keep the audience broader and check the mind of the readers through the steps of fixing the problem in clear manner.

Nine Mistakes Which You Should Avoid Making While Doing Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is the perfect option for modern digital marketers and doing it right is certainly not an easy task. And the future can be surely challenging. There are some easy and common mistakes which the marketers make. Learn about some of the common mistakes which marketers usually make and which can be rectified with certain improvements.

Mistake 1: The Content Is Not Great

No matter the content whatever is published or whatever you are writing, poor content is never well received. Google knows excellent ways to deal with content of a poor quality. It will either bury the page in sandbox or bury it on the Page 49 of the search results. Well it is no use having a poor copy and is better than having someone read it and make fun of it.

In fact, even if the content is read, reader will not get much use of it. A reader who has to battle through grammar errors or spelling errors is going to focus on the problems rather than overall message. This person is not likely to subscribe to the email list or online services or buy any of the products.

We have all heard about content marketing and decided to do it. If you are pressing for result, you can churn few blog posts which will work definitely and hope that it will work definitely.

Better content will surely give you best possible results. There are few things that are obvious in any style, typos and images.

Mistake 2: Your Content Is Not Useful

Say for example, the content which is well written but does not solve a problem is surely of no use at all. If someone is looking for particular information about ice dam and one is giving information about how ice affect the gutter then your write up will surely not be fruitful. The problem exists with detailed consequences of not taking care of it but you have not answered the reader’s question. This person has to search different places for information, which means you may have lost a scale or chance to build relationship with the individual.

To improve the usefulness of the content identifies the questions about what they are really looking at answering those questions directly with content. How do you improve the usefulness of your content? This requires getting in the head of your users, identifying the questions that they are really struggling with, and answering those questions directly with your content. To give meaning to your content, try out certain steps in the most effective way possible.

  • Goal: Learn what the business goals are and what one is trying to achieve in the right sense.
  • Reframe: Try putting the readers right into it and relating to the readers.
  • Seeking Out Examples: Seek out examples which support the main data in the most effective way possible.
  • Organizing: Think about the format which would support and communicate the point in the best way possible.
  • Producing A Draft: If you have drafted the content in the right way possible, you will get the idea where you can show up the points or remove the points.
  • Rewrite: Try shaping the mess and rewriting if required. Try thinking the whole concept from reader’s perspective.
  • Giving A Great Edit And Headline: Spend time writing and giving a headline as defined as this will attract the readers in the best way possible.
  • One Final Look Of Readability: Take a easy and quick scan with paragraphs and sub-heads for better view.
  • Publish: Just publish the write-ups in the best possible way for attracting readers in the right way possible.

Mistake 3: You Are Selling Instead Of Teaching

Promotion is not applicable each and everywhere. We all do believe in selling things and services. But our motto should be to teach first and then sell the products to give ample knowledge. Try reaching out to the audience and helping them in the best possible way.

Your goal will be to share your content helping readers to solve your problem in the best way possible. Be an expert and help readers and writers with the right level of suggestions in the best possible way.

Mistake 4: You Are Not Proving An Expert On The Topic You Have Provided

Whenever you are writing about any particular topic, you must know what you are talking about. It is required to have a concrete plan for any specific piece of content which is required for the company. Like for instance, you are writing about a particular topic yet you do not know how to use it. Therefore, it is very important that you might take the right information, working right on your own, in the best way possible.

Mistake 5: You Are Not Aware Of What You Want The Content To Achieve

Having a clear goal is certainly very important. You need to know that promotion on social media can surely be very important for one and all. If anything goes viral, you will need to know that you have to create a video or write-ups which will draw audience efficiently. Now the type of content may vary if it is written for different and various pages. If the content is written for landing page then it can surely be more promotional, targeting the right audience which is required.

In short, whatever content you are writing for yourself, the motto should be very much clear to one and all. Content without any achievable direction can surely lead readers to a wrong place in no time.

Mistake 6: Your Content Is Not Evergreen

We want that your content has value and provide importance both for today and right in the long future. That is the reason evergreen content provides a basic overview of the topic or information now and years from now. Take the best example like general articles like articles about earth and the moon are completely true and generalized and can be used all the time to read and get information as required. In these write-ups, the facts do not change.

If the content is evergreen, it will allow you to market the customers and increasing revenues without spending any extra time or money on various other marketing materials.

Mistake 7: The Content Is Not Great For Audience

Whenever you are writing content, your ultimate goal is to market any product and services and draw the right amount of audience. But, before that, you must have a clear idea about who the audiences are and what they want.

Let us define to you the mistake which is generally committed in the case of this content management.

  • Content Centric: This type of marketing skills surely achieves no audience. The reason because the content is so written as the audience is searched as per the content which is written. These write-ups are promotional and are usually about what the companies want to talk about.
  • Audience-Centric: Write-ups which are audience-centric usually draws maximum number of audience for one and all. This content is usually created after learning who the audiences are and what the audiences want to hear. Identify the audience, research about them, know them and in turn create such content.

Creating content for the targeted audience should certainly leave you focused in the way. This type of content drives most users as well as potential customers. In some cases, we are targeting a smaller market inside a large niche market which has their own specific requirements. Take the example, the target market for two to three people may surely be different. Well within the groups, there are individuals who have different requirements with different cultural backgrounds and other important factors.

A use of basic language may attract certain target audiences who are not so educated while content with detailed information may target audiences who have adequate knowledge about various sectors irrespectively. The best piece of content may create multiple pieces with an overall message targeting each segment of the market.

Mistake 8: The Content Is Not Optimized For Various Social Channel

Marketing the content on the social media is surely a great way to optimize various social media channels. Remember no two social media channels are the same. Facebook and Twitter have different possible requirements for one and all. Twitter tends to have information in a basic condensed manner. Those who use Facebook, the content preferred are in-depth version so that they can like and share it accordingly with their families.

The audience on Twitter and Facebook are completely different, may vary wildly from what people find on LinkedIn and other professional networking sites.

Mistake 9: SEO Is Not Used To Enhance Various Marketing Efforts

Needless to say, SEO is very important for attracting audiences in the right way possible. Though SEO and content marketing does not come to terms with each other often, SEO does help to drive traffic with the use of keywords or phrases in the hope of landing the page right at the top of the search results.

Content should also be optimized for Twitter and Facebook in the similar way to attract maximum readers into finding you in the right way possible. Define your target audience and do the write-ups properly in the right way to draw in audiences.

Various Tools Which Can Be Effectively Used For Content Marketing

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Well now that we have a detailed idea about the whole procedure of content marketing, you know that content is something which helps to craft a story right about your business, drive home with unique value and inform customers why they should opt to buy the service or product over others.

Jumpstarting the efforts of content marketing can be a difficult battle if there are not the right tools to get the job done. A journalist and marketer offer the audience something which is both useful and entertaining very like something to value a publication right to the readers. Here are some 50 tools which can improve content marketing strategy for future.

Tools For Content Ideas And Discovery

1. Spun for iPhone– SPUN is an app used for iPhone with a beautiful interface curating from the web with millions of websites, Tumblr, YouTube channels with online blogs and magazine.

2. Feedly- Feedly has become best options for RSS with 7 million users in the recent months. Add the favorite websites and blogs to effectively start filling the feed with content.

3. Pulse– This app was purchased by LinkenIn is also an ad serving RSS feed from various other sources which allow the users for curating based on the topics and interests of choice.

4. Quora– The popular social network is used for questions and answers. Learn about the trends from questions asked to inform about efforts of content creation.

5. Trapit– This one is a content discovery app personalized with content feed based on interests and passion perfect for iPad. This app gets information from the feedback giving you better content while people used it.

6. Inbound.org – Use Inbound.org is great to find content from the world of inbound marketing if curated rightly by the community.

7. Paper.li – Browse online newspaper and newsletter from various sources right across the web. Pick newspaper from the stand on various interesting topics on various engaging topics.

8. Alltop– Content is indexed from various types of top publication in various categories like work, health, culture, interests, people, tech, Good, News and Sports.

9. Twitter– Get to know various trending topics on Twitter to see which one is popular worldwide or any specific region for gaining insights on the type of content to develop. Search hashtags that are relevant to expertise on various subjects of interest to the audience and potential audiences.

10. Reddit – Discover what is trending worldwide on Reddit for content inspiration on various topics from the web. Observe the headlines which are more effective on Reddit giving deeper insights on the subject of the article, infographic, video, and types of content.

Tools Which Are Used For Marketing And Distribution

11. Buffer– Use Buffer to effectively schedule the content right across Facebook, LinkenIn, and Twitter for posting the optimized right for an account at the times you are choosing. Buffer usually helps to streamline the process of distributing content right across various channels quickly.

12. Slideshare– This tool is overlooked for content marketing creating a platform to draw the attention to resource or service right for the website. Drawing the attention services to the website is easy with Slideshare.

13. Yoast – This is an effective WordPress plugin which helps to boost your content on the search engines. It makes the whole process easier for website owners of all levels with SEO best practices.

14. MailChimp– MailChimp is one of the easiest email marketing platforms which can be used for marketing content right to the email list. This exclusive content for business will create as well as distribute with the help of this platform.

15. Promoting Posts on Facebook – Facebook advertising can boost the visibility of the content greater than the originality. Your content can be featured in front of a larger audience on Facebook.

16. Inbound Writer – This content optimization applications let business monitor topics of interest understand readers and reach the readers by insights on the content to create and match the passion of the audience.

17. PRWeb – Use this syndication platform to send SEO optimized press releases about valuable content to 30,000 journalists, 250,000 opt-in news subscribers. The platform is much easy to use with effective tools for creating a press release, distribute it as well as monitor the success.

18. Followgen – Targeting tool which allows the business to find a meaningful audience right on the social web with getting the content with right audience. It is a strong fusion of targeting system with social advertising.

19. Tweriod – Twitter tool can help to determine the best time when you can tweet the content for business. This tool gets your content in front of various tweeters outlining the times to tweet.

20. Bundlr – Try creating topic pages with photos, tweets, articles and videos and then distributing with everyone in your network. These users can clip the content to clip from their browser making it easy and quick for one and all.

Tools For Organization

21. Trello – A completely free tool for organizing everything from media to ideas on neatly organized cards. Streamline your content ideas and collaborate with other team members by gathering vote’s right on the particular cards.

22. Evernote – This platform is multi-use organizational platform widely known to note down everything right from business to personal life. Use this to keep track of the ideas of content and calendar of a computer.

23. Google Calendar – This is one of Google helpful tools and is an effective way to organize your company’s editorial posts and schedule them in the right way.

24. IFTTT – Make use of the internet by creating custom solutions and increase productivity across different web applications and platform by working together.

25. Wunderlist – Create beautiful powerful lists which can outline the strategy of content with content ideas to work on desktop and mobile.

26. Pinterest– Use Pinterest organizes your resources, content from others as well as favorite websites for inspiring content marketing inspiration. Make use of the secret board function if the team wishes to curate right to the public.

27. Pocket – Save articles and videos with other helpful resources away to check the later. The pocket app helps to keep the favorite resources organized from apps like Flipboard, Twitter, Zite and other 300+ apps.

28. Remember The Mail– Manage all the tasks with the app which is integrated with Gmail, Outlook, Evernote, Twitter, Google Calendar and more.

29. Harvest – This one is time tracking tool which can keep the content marketing efforts right on schedule with effective software helping to make smarter decisions for the business.

30. MindNode –Try mapping the brainstorm sessions as well as ideas for a better understanding of what is on track and of what is not working right for content strategy with the use of MindNode app. Try thinking about the content ideas with visual experience for iPhone, Mac or iPad.

Tools Used For Creating Content

31. Meme Generator – If one need to add a comical spin right to the content, then look to add a meme which is easy to use for a web resource. Check out the memes which are generated by the service.

32. Visual.ly – Create exclusive info-graphics with data visualizations with visual.ly with infographic designers and experts. With exploring 30,000+ infographics which are created for content marketing inspiration.

33. Google Keyword Tool – With the use of Google keyword tool, one will be able to search for the perfect pairings of keywords to use right in the headlines as well as a body of the article often searched in Google.

34. GIMP – Create visuals for the content with the use of GIMP with free easy photoshop like software. It is important to include images in the posts since 40% people will respond better to information rather than plain text.

35. Resize It – This one is an online image tool which can be resized to create the right dimensions for publishing. It is a helpful resource for various non-technical users for fixing their images in articles, e-books, and PDFs.

36. Issuu – This one is a visually striking tool which can be created for online magazines and look books with both paid as well as free versions right on the needs and budget of the content.

37. Utrak – Utrak is a tool which allows simple web-based poll right into the content. Add a poll to the content is a way to engage readers.

38. Tweets Which Are Embedded – Add live tweets to the online content for adding to a topic or interactive aspect to the website and article. Tweets are with expanded media like videos, article summaries, and photos with real time retweet and favorite counts. Tweets are interactive and enable the readers to follow tweet author, retweet directly from the page.

39. Thinglink – Tag images to certainly make them more engaging with links to music, videos, text, images, Facebook and Twitter and using ThingLink. This tool will allow readers for commenting on images and follow the image channels of users who are creative.

40. PowToon– Create animated presentations and videos with PowToon adding commercial quality experience to the original content.

41. UberFlip – Easy optimization for PDF for adding social widgets, audio and video elements making the content interactive and measurable.

Other Significant Tools

42. Contently– A platform which allows businesses for writers who are high-quality freelance writers handling payment and management of the editorial process.

43. Skyword– This tool offers businesses various levels of creating content with access to 20,000 writers for business intelligence and Imagery for stock images.

44. Textbroker – Textbroker is one of the content creation service offering quick turnaround on press releases, written snippets with a database of authors.

45. Compendium – The Compendium platform gives publishers with tools necessary to plan, publish and promote measuring the content marketing team all in one dashboard.

46. Shareist – Shareist is the platform perfect for small or various medium businesses helping the content marketing life cycle. The tool helps business get content from the web with text, videos, images and more.

47. Lingospot – Lingospot software offers automated content marketing right for the website updating the content on web properties. With control and automation, businesses creating refreshing topic pages.

48. NewsCred – An enterprise content development platform which offers business with 2,500 sources with text articles, images and video bolster the content strategy.

49. XYDO – Create and curate editorial content meeting the online and email marketing needs with XYDO. Integrate MailChimp and Constant Contact for increasing messaging.

50. Brafton – This platform offers content marketing and search engine optimization with content analytics services for creating content on the behalf of the company.

Measuring Your ROI With Content Marketing Success

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Achieving success with content marketing is what we have surely told you about. But when success comes to you, it is more important to measure it so that you can surely hold it, which is coming on your way. Here are the ways in which you can easily measure your success of content marketing.

Tying The Content Marketing Goals To KPI

Once you are aware of your goals, get to know the key performance indicators (KPIs) and you will use to track how to perform on these goals. A KPI is a shortcut which measures the performance right against a goal.

It is very easy to pick a KPI- for tracking sales right as good indication of what has happened tracking brand awareness. These are the cases where you can find an objective metric like site session or shares of social media which one can track.

Performance measuring over time can be done best with KPIs but certainly not in absolute value. Once you start tracking a certain KPI, the interest is vested in the success of the content. Here are certainly some metrics which we should track.

  • Awareness: SEO traffic, landing pages, sessions and rankings.
  • Relationships: Bounce Rate, repeat visitors, social shares, time on page.
  • Lead Generation: Email subscribers.
  • Sales: Thank you pages, event tracking setting them up in the next section.

It is available right as a public export right as part content report templates coming with the post, adding to Google Analytics profile finding it useful.

Google Search Console

It gives information right about the performance in search- how is the average ranking on average for keywords with many people clicking on the content in SERPs search engine optimization.

It is important for using Search Console in order to track the performance of SEO part of the content marketing strategy.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a great tool and is paid software. Ever since Twitter had made changes, BuzzSumo has been the effective way of getting Twitter shares right for the articles.

SharedCount

SharedCount is great alternative letting you export and uses data the way one want, and they have been affected by changes API and do not show Twitter data anymore.

Tracking Content Marketing With Google Analytics

All the metrics discussed are right at the top of the funnel- visits/sessions, landing pages covering how people are consuming the content. The ultimate goal with excellent content is to make people to the next step of a funnel.

None of the metrics can tell you about the readers becoming leaders and how many of the leads are converting to be paying customers.

Determine the criteria for what counts as a lead and devise a way to track that. Once the person leaves us an email, it is usually counted as a lead because there is a chance of them trying the software.

If you are impressed with the whole idea of content marketing, get in touch with our online marketing team who can help you with their professional content marketing services.

Ayan Sarkar

Ayan Sarkar is one of the youngest entrepreneurs of India. Possessing the talent of creative designing and development, Ayan is also interested in innovative technologies and believes in compiling them together to build unique digital solutions. He has worked as a consultant for various companies and has proved to be a value-added asset for each of them. With years of experience in web development, product managing and building domains for customers, he currently holds the position of the CTO in Webskitters Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd.